Big data toting Germans get some big Twitter numbers with World Cup win

As the 2014 World Cup kicked off, we told you about how the Germans were making use of big data tools as they sought to claim football’s ultimate crown for the fourth time. A month later, they had managed just that thanks to an extra time goal by substitute Mario Gotze. Along the way, they managed to cause some serious Twitter traffic.

The final itself saw 32-million tweets, with Gotze the most mentioned player on the German side and, unsurprisingly, Lionel Messi taking top honours for the Argentinians.

When the final whistle blew meanwhile, Twitter says it saw 618 725 tweets per minute (TPM) discussing the match — a record for an event. That’s hardly surprising, given that this tournament broke a number of records on the social network.

A look at a Twitter heatmap throughout the course of the final shows just how high global interest was in the event.

As a sign of how influential Twitter has become, you only need to look at how many members of the German football team were tweeting pictures of themselves with the trophy in the immediate aftermath of the game.